The Howard Kurtz saga

In 2010, Kurtz wrote a story about Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) that suggested he had interviewed the congressman. Unfortunately, no such interview had taken place. It took three months, but Kurtz ultimately issued a lengthy correction in which he claimed to have been unaware that he was speaking with the congressman’s spokesman, not with the actual lawmaker.

In 2011, Kurtz published a story that appeared to depict Nancy Pelosi criticizing the Obama administration’s ability to stay “on message.” Newsweek and The Daily Beast later corrected the story, noting that it “included a comment erroneously attributed to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, criticizing the White House’s efforts at political messaging.” A Pelosi spokesman also told POLITICO at the time that she had not issued the quote. The Washingtonian awarded Kurtz with the year’s “most embarrassing correction.”

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Then, in January of this year, Kurtz acknowledged that he had edited an error into a story indicating that Fox News Host Greta Van Susteren was casting doubts on an illness suffered by Hillary Clinton. “I want to apologize to Fox’s Greta Van Susteren for adding incorrect information about her to a Daily Beast article,” he wrote, adding later, “What’s more, as the piece noted, Van Susteren took to task those who mocked Clinton’s illness, including her own Fox colleagues. For that, she deserves kudos, not an inaccurate account.”

Kurtz joined The Washington Post in 1981, where he served under legendary editor Ben Bradlee covering the Justice Department and Capitol Hill before serving as the paper’s New York bureau chief. He started covering media in 1990 and joined CNN as its resident media critic eight years later. In 2010, Brown lured him away from the Post with what one source described as a “very generous” salary.

The decision to add “The Daily Download” to this list of responsibilities has confounded some of Kurtz’s viewers.

”What would I go to this site for? As another place Howard Kurtz does his able thing on the week’s media news? Okay, but why does he need that? And why do we? He’s got the Daily Beast and CNN: plenty of platform,” Jay Rosen, the New York University journalism professor, wrote in an email to POLITICO. “Daily Download resists understanding.”

The question of Kurtz’s future, in terms of both reputation and relevance, now turns to CNN.

The network’s new president, Jeff Zucker, has stated that there are aspects of the old CNN he would like to change. It is unclear how this might affect Kurtz, but the network’s weekend programming has already started shifting toward more entertainment-oriented programming.